Many workers are confronting the urge to quit their jobs. For you, that urge may be stronger than ever, but before you take the leap, it’s important to put a plan in place that supports how and when you enter your next career path.
Leaving your current job is often the easy part and deciding what’s next can be the real challenge, but it also serves as an incredible opportunity to start fresh. Many of us don’t have the luxury to simply quit our day job to then explore new opportunities. So, where do you start?
What to Do When You Want to Shift Careers
Simply exploring your feeling of desiring a new career opportunity is a great first step. From there, carefully assessing your career to date, then building out your network and honing your skills will help you move forward confidently on a journey to a new calling.
Ask Yourself Why You Want a New Job or Career
It’s critical that you keep focused on what is leading you to consider this decision in the first place. You must prioritize yourself and your needs in future decisions while acknowledging if you may have others who depend on you.
Goal one: do not wind up in another job you don’t like. Trust your instincts about what makes you happy, since now is the ideal time to try something new and maybe enter a new stage of your life.
Simply making a list of what qualities you dislike about your current role can make space to uncover where you want to fill those gaps. Identify your interests, passions, and values. Begin to connect the dots to uncover where these qualities align in new roles or entirely new industries.
Cultivate a Network of Support
It’s times like these when you need to leverage your existing connections to cultivate a network of support. Having conversations on exploring new career paths can help you evaluate what’s most important to you as you head in a new direction.
Who to Connect With
Friends, family, former coworkers, all LinkedIn connections, and more are all fair game when evaluating new opportunities. After all, this is a new phase in your life and a new you — rely on the people who know you best to support your journey.
Maybe you’re unsure if a new job is right for you, and it certainly can’t hurt to reach out to an old friend or connection in the field for advice.
How to Grow Your Network
Think your current skill set isn’t reading on your resume when it comes to applying it to a new career? Reach out to grab a coffee or a call with someone who does know.
These conversations are critical, and if you are still in the exploratory phase make sure to ask your connection to introduce you to one or two new people after your initial meeting. Your network will continue to grow as you get exposure to new opportunities and ways of thinking.
Focus in on Your Leading Qualities and Skills
When finding a new job or an entirely new career, many often fear having a lack of direct work experience. Hiring managers and leaders know there are skill sets that set star employees apart regardless of their industry experience.
Learnability, collaboration, resilience, leadership, problem solving, and more are essential skills for career success. Where you lack industry-specific work experience, you can still stand out by sharing examples of how these qualities have resolved conflict, advance a new idea, or helped to successfully complete a project.
Don’t Undervalue Your Accomplishments
Despite the fact that it may feel like you’re starting over, it’s critical not to undervalue your current skills and accomplishments when considering prospective professional entry points. You’ve spent time establishing a roster of meaningful talents, many of which can even offer you an edge over other applicants, whether you have expertise in the corporate sector, customer service or artistic endeavors.
By answering the “why” of your desires to change careers, using the network you’ve built to lean on for support and guidance, identifying your best abilities you can make bold career decisions with confidence. Remember that you are not starting from zero and that you already have a lot to offer potential employers.
Guest Author Steven Weinstein is the CEO of Seismic Capital Company, an early-stage growth investor committed to identifying, guiding, nurturing companies seeking to meaningfully disrupt the space they work in. Steven’s diverse career path has taken him from a journalist at Associated Press and Reuters, to working in technology, as well as financial services. He serves as Chair of the Board for Seismic, where he leads the executive team and a roster of highly talented advisory board members.
from Career Tool Belt https://ift.tt/2UEvty5
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